Fever Crumb by Philip Reeve
336 pages
Foundling Fever Crumb has been raised as an Engineer, but at age fourteen, she leaves her sheltered world and begins to learn startling truths about her past while facing danger in the present. Book #1 in the series.
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Review by Sam:
Fever Crumb, a steampunk sci-fi story full of action and great characters, is set in a London thousands of years in the future that feels like something out of a Dickens novel. The action centers on an orphan, Fever Crumb, who has been raised by Dr. Crumb and the Order of Engineers to be completely rational and unemotional. Her mysterious beginning leaves her with questions about her identity, which become more pressing when she is sent to assist a young archeologist in a secret project that unearths a lost part of London’s past. She has lived her life in the protection of the Engineer’s unlikely home in the head of a massive sculpture, and her perspective and experiences as she ventures into London make for an exciting, thoroughly engaging adventure, full of interlocking mysteries and fully realized characters. She faces danger at every turn, from the ruffians in the city and from the memories that fill her mind but are not hers. Philip Reeves writes with rich prose and is able to keep the action popping without sacrificing style. Add in well-placed, understated humor, and the result is one find read! The Web of Air and Scrivener’s Moon follow; this trilogy is a prequel to Reeve’s Mortal Engines Quartet.
Review by Rachel B:
Fever Crumb is a teenage girl growing up in London, years after us. Her world is filled with knowledge, violence, and discrimination. Humans banded together to rid the world of the cruel “Patchskins,” part robot, part human. When Fever Crumb wanders away from home on a dangerous adventure, her two miscolored eyes are mistaken as sign of a Patchskin. Who will protect Fever? What strange things will she discover about herself, the world’s past, her family, and our future?